Glossary · Image standards
Content Credentials (C2PA)
Content Credentials are tamper-evident provenance records, defined by the C2PA standard, that travel with an image or video and record how it was made and edited, including whether AI was used.
C2PA stands for the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity, a standards body whose specification describes how to attach a signed record, called a manifest, to a media file. Content Credentials is the public name for that record. It can say which tool created the file, what edits were made and whether generative AI was involved.
The manifest is cryptographically signed, so changes made after signing can be detected. That is the main difference from plain metadata such as XMP keywords, which anyone can add or remove without a trace.
Sellers meet Content Credentials mainly on TikTok. TikTok's policy on AI-generated content says creators must label AI-generated content that shows realistic-appearing scenes or people, offers a label toggle, labels its own AI effects automatically, and uses Content Credentials (C2PA) to label content from other platforms automatically. A product video made in another AI tool can therefore arrive already marked as AI-generated.
Two mistakes are common. One is treating C2PA and Amazon's requirement as the same thing; Amazon asks for the contains-synthetic-performer keyword in the XMP dc:subject field, not a C2PA manifest. The other is assuming that stripping credentials removes the duty to disclose. TikTok Shop's rules still require disclosure of significant AI use and treat false disclosure as a violation.
PicBarn writes Amazon's XMP keyword into model exports; disclosure on TikTok Shop is still set by the seller at upload.
See also
- contains-synthetic-performer tagcontains-synthetic-performer is the keyword Amazon asks sellers to write into an image's IPTC/XMP dc:subject field before uploading any photo that shows a photorealistic AI-generated person.
- XMP metadataXMP (Extensible Metadata Platform) is an ISO standard, created by Adobe, for storing descriptive data such as keywords, creator and rights inside an image file, where editing tools and upload systems can read it.
- AI-generated content disclosureAI-generated content disclosure is the requirement to tell buyers or the platform when an image or video was made or significantly changed with AI, through a label, toggle, checkbox or metadata tag.